After a summer of examining fan quality in the NBA, NHL, MLB, NFL, and College Basketball, finally we get to the most important sport in the South, College Football. The winner this year (and last year) and probably into the distant future in our ranking of college football fan bases is the University of Texas. It’s not close. Following Texas, we have a top 5 of Notre Dame, Georgia, Florida, and Auburn.

One notable loser from our previous rankings is Penn State. The Nittany Lions dropped from the top ten to number sixteen. And what about other power schools like Alabama and LSU? They finished 11th and 12th, respectively.

Our approach is data and statistically driven, as we look at how fans support their teams after controlling for how well the team performs on the field, the market it plays in, and school characteristics. For the fan equity analysis, we build a statistical model using publicly available data from the last fourteen years that predicts team revenues as a function of metrics related to team performance such as winning percentage, bowl participation, and other factors such as number of students, stadium capacity, etc. We then compare actual revenues over the last few years to what is predicted by our model. Please click herefor an explanation of why we use this approach to fan equity measurement. Click here for more information on the methodologies behind our studies of fan quality in general.

Based on viewership and sponsorship interest, the NFL is flourishing through a series of highly-publicized fiascoes that would have wreaked havoc on many organizations with weaker brands, experts told CNBC.
“Just the strength of that product and fan loyalty and fan interest is so great that it’s really kind of bulletproof at this point,” said Michael Lewis, a marketing professor at Emory University who specializes in sports.